Teachers' Beliefs

Over the last years, teachers' beliefs has become one of the most important concepts in teaching and teacher education (Calderhead, 1996; Pajares, 1992). In codifying and understanding the complexity of teaching, scholars have suggested that greater attention needs to be paid to the teachers' thoughts and actions and how they affect quality teaching (Borko and Putnam, 1996). A number of scholars have suggested that educational researchers need to shift their research focus from pedagogical strategies and teaching behaviors to the beliefs that prompt teachers to use these strategies and behaviors (Richardson, 1996). As Rovegno (2003) suggested “to understand good teaching, we need to hear teachers' voices and study what good teachers thought, knew, and believed” (p. 295).

Calls for exploring the nature and role of teachers' beliefs in teacher education have proliferated in the literature (O'Sullivan, 1996; 2003; Wilson and Berne, 1999; Zeichner, 1999). O'Sullivan (2003), for example, argued that in quality teacher education programs, teacher educators need to understand the critical role of teachers' beliefs and address them in their programs in order to influence teachers' views of teaching and learning. In contemporary research, teachers' change is assumed to lead to better teaching which implies a better education of students (Richardson and Placier, 2001). Scholars have suggested that the beliefs that teachers hold, serve as filters through which their learning takes place and they are critical targets and major determinants of changes in teaching practice (Borko and Putnam, 1996).

This chapter aims to provide an overview of what do we know about teachers' beliefs in physical education. The content of this chapter is based on a selected number of studies in which teachers' beliefs are explicitly represented. Given the rapid growth of research this chapter is not meant to be exhaustive or even comprehensive. The scope, rather, is to define this body of literature, to represent the basic dimensions and directions of this work, and to make it accessible to the physical education community in general. The chapter is intended to provide an overview of the forms of beliefs teachers hold, how beliefs are developed, and the role of teachers' beliefs on teaching and learning. It is organized around the main area of research on teachers' beliefs and each of its sections examines categories of research conducted on this topic.

More specifically, the first section of the chapter opens with an analysis of the construct of teachers' beliefs and an effort is made to clarify the term. Subsequently, the role of teachers' beliefs in the act of teaching is discussed. Finally, the first section provides a short presentation of the kind of experiences that are influential in the development of teachers' beliefs. In the second section research findings on teachers' beliefs are reviewed and discussed. The third section provides an analysis of major findings and conclusions from this line of research and provides directions for further inquiry and implications for teacher education practices.

Definitions, Functions, and Origins of Beliefs